Christopher Cross Financed Grammy-Winning Debut Album by Selling Drugs: 'I Had a Very Successful Weed Business'

Mar. 15, 2025

Christopher Cross in 1986.Photo:dpa picture alliance / Alamy

dpa picture alliance / Alamy

WhenChristopher Crossburst onto the music scene at the end of 1979 with his Grammy-winning self-titled debut album, he seemed like a banker or someone who’d be selling insurance door-to-door. He didn’t look anything like your average rock star.

But as Cross himself explains in the new filmYacht Rock: A Dockumentary, he was actually a lot more hardcore than he sounded or looked. In fact, his massive debut album might never have existed at all had it not been for his knack for selling drugs — and indulging in them, too.

Christopher Cross in ‘Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary’.HBO

HBO

He ended up sending his tape to the wrong person at Warner Bros. Records — an assistant who liked it so much that he went to lunch with Lenny Waronker, then head of the label’s A&R department, and forced him to listen to the tape in the car.

“Lenny told me years later that had I just sent it to A&R, it would have been rejected outright, because they weren’t really accepting anything. So it was pretty serendipitous that I sent it to the wrong guy,” Cross says.

Christopher Cross.HBO

He would have a short-lived but impactful career. His debut album sold five million copies, produced four hit singles (“Ride Like the Wind,” “Sailing,” “Never Be the Same” and “Say You’ll Be Mine”) and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year. His fifth single, 1981’s “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do),” would hit No. 1 and win an Oscar.

By the mid ’80s, Cross' chart era was pretty much over, despite its auspicious start at the turn of the decade. Like his career, his debut album’s first single, “Ride Like the Wind,” which went all the way to No. 2 onBillboard’s Hot 100 and became a yacht rock classic (with Doobie Brother and lifelong friendMichael McDonaldon backing vocals), also had drug-fueled beginnings.

‘Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary’.Courtesy of HBO

Courtesy of HBO

He continues: “So then we drove from Houston down to Austin to record, and I was sitting in the front seat of the van and had taken acid, and I wrote the words to ‘Ride Like the Wind,’ driving from Houston to Austin, on acid.”

Yacht Rock: A Dockumentarywill debut Nov. 29 on HBO and be available to stream on Max, following its Nov. 13 premiere at the DOC NYC festival.

source: people.com